Background
 Age and fitness typically enter into decisions regarding "intensity" of initial induction therapy for newly-diagnosed AML or its prognostic equivalent myelodysplastic syndrome with 10-20% blasts (hrMDS); patients with either are eligible for most of our institution's AML studies. However, "fitness" is a non-specific term. Here we examined the relation between specific covariates and intensity of initial induction. The primary goal was to examine the ability of multivariate models to identify objective characteristics associated with choice of intensity of induction: high + intermediate vs. low, and of high vs. intermediate + low.
 Patients and Methods
 We reviewed 1,346 newly diagnosed AML/hrMDS patients seen at our center from January 2008 through May 2018. We excluded 226 patients who received palliative care only or unknown treatment outside our center and 188 patients given uncommon regimens, generally on a clinical trial. High-intensity treatment consisted of ara-C in single doses ³ 1g/m2, intermediate intensity was 7+3 +/- other drugs, and low intensity was azacitidine or decitabine +/- other drugs. Pre-treatment characteristics examined in the 932 analyzed patients (29% with 10-20% blasts) for potential inclusion in multivariate models were year of treatment, age, gender, de novo or secondary disease, performance status (PS), white blood cell count, treatment related mortality score (TRM, predicting death by day 28 after receipt of intermediate or intense induction), blast percentage, ELN 2017 risk, and distance from home to our center (Table 1). P-values < 0.01 were considered "significant" in the multivariate models with values for area under receiver operating characteristic (AUC) curves of 0.6-0.7, 0.7-0.8, and 0.8-0.9 considered, as commonly understood, to respectively denote "poor", "fair", and "good" predictive ability.
 Results
 57% of the 932 patients received high intensity treatment, 21% intermediate intensity, and 23% low intensity. Covariates significantly associated with receipt of high vs. intermediate/low intensity on multivariable analysis were younger age, (surprisingly) PS 3-4 (OR 1.4, 95% CI 1.1, 1.8), lower TRM score, and > 20% blasts. The model's AUC was 0.69. Older age, higher TRM score and blasts 10-20% were associated with receipt of low rather than high or intermediate intensity induction. This model's AUC was 0.85. With the marginal exception that patients with ELN 2017 adverse risk were more likely to receive high intensity induction (OR 1.1, 95%CI 1.0-1.2) neither ELN 2017 risk nor secondary vs. de novo AML were associated with decisions regarding intensity. Although rates of CR without MRD and of induction failure (neither CR nor CRi) were better following high (56%, 20% respectively) or intermediate (58%, 28%) than low intensity induction (16%, 58%), after accounting for age, PS (2 rather than 0-1), TRM score and ELN risk, overall survival was similar in high vs. low intensity [OR 0.95, 95%CI 0.8-1.2], high vs. intermediate (0.99, 95%CI 0.8-1.3) and intermediate vs. low (0.96, 95%CI 0.7-1.3) groups.
 Conclusion
 A multivariable model provided reasonably accurate prediction of which patients with newly-diagnosed AML or hrMDS will receive low intensity induction at our institution, but a poor prediction of which patients will receive high intensity. Other, perhaps less objective, covariates subsumed under "fitness" may play an important role, particularly in the latter decision.

 Gardner: Abbvie: Speakers Bureau. Othus:Celgene: Other: Data Safety and Monitoring Committee; Glycomimetics: Other: Data Safety and Monitoring Committee. Becker:The France Foundation: Honoraria; Accordant Health Services/Caremark: Consultancy; AbbVie, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glycomimetics, Invivoscribe, JW Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Trovagene: Research Funding. Halpern:Pfizer Pharmaceuticals: Research Funding; Bayer Pharmaceuticals: Research Funding. Scott:Agios: Speakers Bureau; Incyte: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Novartis: Research Funding; Celgene Corporation: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Alexion: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau. Walter:Argenx BVBA: Consultancy; New Link Genetics: Consultancy; Pfizer: Consultancy, Research Funding; Race Oncology: Consultancy; Boehringer Ingelheim: Consultancy; Boston Biomedical: Consultancy; Covagen: Consultancy; Daiichi Sankyo: Consultancy; Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy; Kite Pharma: Consultancy; Agios: Consultancy; BiVictriX: Consultancy; BioLineRx: Consultancy; Seattle Genetics: Research Funding; Amgen: Consultancy; Amphivena Therapeutics: Consultancy, Equity Ownership; Aptevo Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Astellas: Consultancy.


Introduction: In the growing service sector, communication issues are a part of the service design process; considering service as a complex social and communication interface, the design and evaluation of its interaction quality requires new conceptual models (Mantovani) able to control the system complexity. The service analytical model we are proposing could be a potential tool for communication designer to better face the design of service communication interface. Method: Considering services as situated (Suchman) social and communication systems, we have selected activity theory as reference model for service evaluation model, because of its systemic and artefact-mediated conception of activity. The derived model looks at moments of encounter and comparison between supplier's and user's activity systems as the main source of evaluation. The methodology foresees three main phases: 1. Re-building of user's and supplier's activity systems (Engeström); 2) evaluation of service interaction and communication through analytical filter through external (evaluator) and internal observation (user and supplier). 3) Comparison of the separated evaluations. Results: At the moment we are testing the methodology on a domotic project where the acceptance of innovative behaviour should be based on adequate service system interpretation. The foreseen result should be a complete and systemic evaluation of service effectiveness for three main reasons: 1. the activity systems analysis provides the evaluator with necessary knowledge to identify possible origins of situated misunderstandings; 2. the use of analytical filters built on specific elements of the activity systems involved 3. the subjective perception of action is balanced by external observation. Discussion: In order to evaluate the quality of service interface, it's necessary to define a conceptual model that looks at communication and activity effectiveness in a systemic way. This consideration should imply a role change: communication designer becomes a sort of activity system designer enriching his cultural background and tools with activity analytical instruments. Service as a situated action The widespread shift of product-oriented firms towards the introduction and integration of services within their business, implies an increase of complexity in the design and management processes which asks for new disciplinary perspectives and competencies. The service, representing the tool that increases and materialises the possibilities of physical products to create relationship and support action, becomes the basis of the companies value creation strategy [Normann, 1999]. There is then a shift from a "...design/sale of only "physical" products, to the design/sale of a system of products and services all able to satisfy a specific customer's need..." [Manzini e Vezzoli, 2000] that originates a service economy, where communication issues can be often considered as a part of the whole service design process. The design and evaluation of services, considered as interaction spaces characterised by new complex social and communication interfaces, requires new conceptual models [Mantovani, 1995], able to control this new system complexity. This paper tries to answer to this growing necessity proposing a service design approach that can help companies and designers to face this shift and manage this new kind of complexity, mainly looking at services in their social and systemic dimension; in particular the service model we are presenting, could be a potential analytical tool for communication design practitioners to improve the design of service communication interfaces. Our design approach looks at services as purposeful action and has adopted two main research frameworks: the theory of the situated action [Suchman, 1987] and the Activity Theory [Engeström, et alii, 1999].


The supply of raw materials in the construction sector causes the rapid decrease or destruction of our natural resources. Recycling of construction demolition waste in order to reduce the reduction or destruction of natural resources will reduce the need for raw materials as well as environmental pollution. In this study, the feasibility of producing foam concrete with fine (sand) aggregate from construction debris was investigated. Foam concrete was produced with 5 different water/cement ratios by using construction debris that passed through a 4 mm sieve as aggregate in the mixtures. The properties such as unit volume weight, compressive strength, water absorption ratio, ultra sound transmission rate and thermal conductivity coefficients of the produced foam concrete samples were investigated. The most suitable of these properties gave a mixture design with a W/C ratio of 0.45.


A three-dimensional multibeam tracking sonar system (FishTV) was deployed in the stratified waters of Saanich Inlet in July-August of 1996 and 1997 to assess the swimming behavior of euphausiids in situ. Here, a new algorithm is used to estimate swimming velocities of animals from the uncorrelated displacements of acoustic targets in pairs of sonar frames with increasing time delays between frames. Assuming isotropic motions of euphausiids, the superior spatial resolution of the sonar in one dimension (range) is used to infer the three-dimensional motions. We applied the algorithm to sonar tracks of groups of 10 000 - 25 000 euphausiids recorded in the daytime at depths just above the oxycline on six different occasions. The animal movements were described with a probability density function for velocity which suggests that about 60-70% of the animals were moving less than or equal to 0.3-1.2 cm·s-1. These distributions imply remarkably low swimming speeds and quiescent behavior. Limited motility in the d...


Abstract The present study investigated the effects of different feed additives on growth performance, carcass characteristics, gut microbial population, intestinal morphology, and blood metabolites of broiler chickens. A total of 540, day-old Ross 308 male chicks were randomly distributed into 6 dietary treatments with 6 replicate pens per treatment for 35 days. The birds fed on a basal diet without feed additive (CON) or the basal diet supplemented with 0.25 g/kg antibiotic as growth promoter (AGP), 1 g/kg essential oils (EO), 1.7 g/kg synbiotic (SYN), 3 g/kg medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA), and 1 mL/L essential oils in drinking water (EOW). The additives improved the body weight gain (p = .004) and feed conversion ratio (p = .02) compared to the CON group during the whole trial. The serum concentration of cholesterol was lower in the birds fed the MCFA diet and serum concentration of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) decreased in MCFA and SYN groups. The relative weight of spleen was the greatest in MCFA group (p = .01). Feeding birds diets containing different additives decreased the population of coliform (p = .002) and Clostridium perfringens (p = .01) while Lactobacillus population was greater in broilers offered EOW, SYN, and MCFA supplements (p = .02). The jejunal villus height enhanced in the broiler chickens which received AGP and MCFA additives (p = .008). It is concluded that EOW, SYN, MCFA, and EO as alternatives for AGP improved the growth performance and intestinal morphometric indices and reduced the caecal pathogenic bacteria in broiler chickens. Highlights Adding MCFA to diet and EO to the drinking water improved BWG and FCR in broiler chickens. Dietary supplementation of MCFA decreased serum total cholesterol, increased caecal LAB population, and improved intestinal villus height. All supplements as AGP alternatives had beneficial effects on suppressing the pathogenic bacteria.


Abstract The menopause marks the transition from reproductive to non-reproductive phases in a woman's life. It may be regarded as a time of both disappointment (loss of femininity, onset of senescence) and relief (no further conception and menstruation). The menopause is associated with hormonal changes, particularly reduced oestrogen production. This paper reviews the effect of the menopause on sexual functioning and discusses the role of hormone replacement therapy in preventing sexual difficulties.


In this paper, charge distribution of NaCl aerosol particles having a diameter of 54-292 nm has been obtained using Tandem Differential Mobility Analyser (TDMA) technique. Because of experimental constraints, the studies were limited to estimation of the negatively charged fraction up to three electronic units. The nonneutralised charged fractions for different sizes were compared with that of neutralised NaCl aerosol particles. It was observed that 19-21% particles are singly charged, 15-18% particles are doubly charged and 7-13% particles are triply charged. The charged fractions for other than singly charged particles were higher for non-neutralised particles as compared to that of neutralised particles.


The notion of landscape is associated with the look. In each visual scene, a fragment of space is made landscape. Thus the diverse territories and places of the world appear condensed in visual formats increasingly diversified through the means of information and communication of the contemporary culture. In this paper we want to emphasize that landscapes come from a particular methodological construction and are not neutral visions of lots of elements. As landscapes illustrate the relationship between space and social life, we especially care to take into account the articulation of local and global references; the intervening social actors and the dominant technologies. The text presents indicators for the analysis of landscapes and resources for reading landscape compositions. It enables the construction and interpretation of varied data, stories, experiences and testimonies that join the intimate space and the public space, in order to advance a conceptual proposal on multiterritoriality.


Comments on the need to provide teachers who are well-trained in the laboratory sciences, particularly chemistry, and recommended changes to college programs that prepare such professionals.


The use of electromagnetic force to stir molten metal in some casting processes was reported long ago. Recently, it has been demonstrated that by applying an external magnetic field along with or without an external electric current, the melt flow in the weld pool can be influenced leading to the change of weld shape in both CO2 and Nd:YAG welding of aluminium alloys with or without filler metal. However, so far these very limited studies are based on experiments and no theoretical explanations are given. Hence, there is a strong need to fundamentally understand how the electromagnetic force is affecting the melt flow and the resulting weld pool shape. This would provide a foundation to optimize and control process parameters in order to achieve the desired weld pool shape.In this paper, mathematical models and the associated numerical techniques have been developed to systematically investigate the effects of electromagnetic force in laser keyhole welding. The transient weld pool fluid flow and the shape of the solidified weld are calculated under various electromagnetic conditions for both spot and 3-D moving laser welding. The parameters studied include the magnitude, duration, and direction of the electrometric force, welding speed, and the time when electromagnetic force is applied, etc. In addition, the feasibilities of using electromagnetic force to eliminate porosity formation and to modify weld bead surface smoothness are conducted. Computer animations showing the fluid flow and weld pool dynamics, and how the electromagnetic force influences the melt flow behaviors will be shown in the presentation.The use of electromagnetic force to stir molten metal in some casting processes was reported long ago. Recently, it has been demonstrated that by applying an external magnetic field along with or without an external electric current, the melt flow in the weld pool can be influenced leading to the change of weld shape in both CO2 and Nd:YAG welding of aluminium alloys with or without filler metal. However, so far these very limited studies are based on experiments and no theoretical explanations are given. Hence, there is a strong need to fundamentally understand how the electromagnetic force is affecting the melt flow and the resulting weld pool shape. This would provide a foundation to optimize and control process parameters in order to achieve the desired weld pool shape.In this paper, mathematical models and the associated numerical techniques have been developed to systematically investigate the effects of electromagnetic force in laser keyhole welding. The transient weld pool fluid flow and the shape...


ROR +Gz acceleration withstood by fighter pilots generates GLOC, which is assumed to be related to cranial hypertension. Results derived from simple mathematical models seem to confirm this hypothesis.


This paper proposes a word-by-word model selection approach to domain adaptation for Word Sense Disambiguation. By this approach, the model for a target word is automatically selected from a candidate model set, which is comprised of improved self-training models and a supervised model. The improved self-training uses sense priors to prevent its iteration from converging into undesirable states. Experimental results on a domain-specific corpus show that: (1) our improved self-training model is effective for the words which have target domain linked senses; (2) the selected models obtain higher accuracies than each single model and effectively improve the performance compared to the state-of-the-art supervised model.


Daiichi Sankyo will spend about $135 million to enhance its manufacturing capabilities in Japan for antibody-drug conjugates. ADCs link a cytotoxic molecule to an antibody that binds selectively to a target on cancer cells. The company says the investment, in three of its Japanese plants, will improve its ability to make ADCs for investigational and clinical use. Daiichi is developing six ADCs, including two in Phase I clinical trials.


The dc distributed power system is often composed of several sub-systems. The interaction between the sub-systems is likely to deterioate the stability and dynaimcal performace of the whole power system, even making the system unstable. The characteristic of the negative input impedance is the main reason reponsible for such unstability. This paper selects the input impedance of the load converter, which is loaded with the constant power, as objects of standardization. The characteristics of the input impedance of the synchronous buck converter are analyzed in detail. The influence of three factors including the output power rating, the switching frequency and the control-mode on the input impedance are verified by experimental results. Experimental results lay a foundation for the standarization of the input impedance.


For studying and developing human-computer dialog system and spoken language translation system oriented to the restricted domain, data collecting and analysis of the characteristics of spoken language are very important. How to establish proper strategies to process new linguistic phenomena and to enhance the expandability and transplantation of system is also important. This paper presents a method to deal with corpus from different domains. By using this method, the characteristics of Chinese spoken language in hotel reservation are studied and the results are presented in this paper.


Test data collection is an important part of steam turbine test.General design idea of thermal test data collection and economic analysis was described.It introduced the instructing of hardware platform of the system structure of distributed network structures and the modules of the software system structure.The economic analysis was achieved through algorithm configuration.


This animation uses image-based lighting and radiance environment maps made from a series of time-lapse movies. The illumination changes over time.


A comparison is conducted on FRT ability of latest Grid Code requirements for wind farm integration between China and selected EU countries. The main causes of the differences are investigated. The author tried to predict the future trend of regulations and illustrate some clues of them.


The problem of excitation and radiation of the array of narrow circumferential or arc transverse slots cut in the infinitely thin and perfectly conducting coaxial line screen has been solved by the magnetomotive forces method (MMF) in this paper. The frequency-energy and spatial characteristics of these systems are calculated taking into account the internal and external space interconnections between the radiators on conditions of arbitrary location of the slot elements when internal and external spaces have been filled by the dielectric for any values of permittivity. The results of calculation and analysis of the amplitude and phase distributions in the slot arrays, directional and energy antenna characteristics depending on the working wavelength in cases of the slot element location on the infinite or semi-infinite coaxial lines have been proposed.


The join of work and study is tried in the course of electrics skills training,and it is aimed to stand out the vocation,opening and practice.In the end,the abilities of practice and innovation of the students are trained and improved.


In a recent project, the Language Applications Grid was augmented to support the mining of scientific publications. The results of that effort have now been repurposed to focus on Covid-19 literature, including modification of the LAPPS Grid "AskMe" query and retrieval engine. We describe the AskMe system and discuss its functionality as compared to other query engines available to search covid-related publications.


Narrated one kind of the PLC control system that be able to automatic and control monitoring the operative in a textile mill bar in the Slanting lane promotion process of the coal mine.the system can automatic monitoring the operative in a textile mill bar to make or break,And according to the elevator real-time technical parameter to alatomatic diagonsis promotion running status,has the third contact to report to the police,the promotion hook number computation,the operative in a textile mill bar condition real-time display,realizes the winch movement,anxiously stops and has the winch chain-like function.


Abstract. Software schemes to speculative parallelization require no changes to the hardware of existing shared-memory systems, but can suffer from significant overheads. This paper evaluates the use of helper threads to assist the execution of the compute threads by performing some of the most expensive speculative operations on their behalf. Performance gains can be achieved if alleviating such overheads compensates for the loss of processing resources available for the main computation. Moving speculative operations from the main threads to helper threads, however, is not trivial and introduces several new race conditions, which are addressed in this paper. Experimental results so far show that for an SMP system helper threads fail to materialize any significant performance gains, but that for a system with multithreading a more promising outcome can be expected.


The dynamical equation of the crankshaft system of single-cylinder engine are educed.Using MATLAB/SIMULINK,this article build the SIMULINK model of the system and founds the kinetic and dynamical character of the system's components.The conclusion of this article can be the reference to proceed the optimum design single-cylinder engine's crankshaft system.


Maternal serum levels of asymmetric dimethyl‐ arginine (ADMA), an endogenous inhibitor of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, are known to be increased in pregnant women with high‐resistance placental circulation in the second trimester. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between uterine artery resistance and maternal serum ADMA concentrations in the first trimester.


Coordinate regression has established itself as one of the most successful current trends in model-based 6 degree of freedom (6-DOF) object pose estimation from a single image. The underlying idea is to train a system that can regress the three-dimensional coordinates of an object, given an input RGB or RGB-D image and known object geometry, followed by a robust procedure such as RANSAC to optimize the object pose. These coordinate regression based approaches exhibit state-of-the-art performance by using pixel-level cues to model the probability distribution of object parts within the image. However, they fail to capture global information at the object level to learn accurate foreground/background segmentation. In this letter, we show that combining global features for object segmentation and local features for coordinate regression results in pixel-accurate object boundary detections and consequently a substantial reduction in outliers and an increase in overall performance. We propose a deep architecture with an instance-level object segmentation network that exploits global image information for object/background segmentation and a pixel-level classification network for coordinate regression based on local features. We evaluate our approach on the standard ground-truth 6-DOF pose estimation benchmarks and show that our joint approach to accurate object segmentation and coordinate regression results in the state-of-the-art performance on both RGB and RGB-D 6-DOF pose estimation.


The invention aims at solving the problems that a control system evaluation process in an industrial process is complex, accuracy of an evaluation result for a time varying perturbation loop is low and the like in an existing method, and provides a linear regression performance evaluation method with a forgetting factor. The linear regression performance evaluation method with the forgetting factor only uses input and output data collected in the loop to build a linear process disturbance model, and then introduces the forgetting factor into the model so as to complete real-time updating of the data. In comparison of ethylene cracking furnace control system performance evaluation performed by respectively using the linear regression performance evaluation method with the forgetting factor and the existing method, the linear regression performance evaluation method with the forgetting factor has the advantages of obtaining a stable evaluation result for a time varying model after the forgetting factor is introduced, and being qualified for performance evaluation of a whole system of a cracking furnace.


After a long period of growth, the Greek economy in 2008 tipped into recession, which lasted at the period 2008-2018 and still affects the economic recovery of the country, which appeared relatively slow due to the magnitude or the characteristics of the economic problem and the unsuccessful strategies adopted and implemented. This paper studies the evolution of the fundamental macroeconomic measures of the Greek economy and detects the key changes that have occurred during that period on data from the Input Output Tables of the years 2010 and 2015. which provide a satisfactory context for describing the interconnections of productive sectors of an economy. The study aims to provide insights about the structural characteristics of the Greek economy, the profound knowledge of which contributes to the successful implementation of economic development policies and to the interconnection of its productive sectors, given that the intensification of relations between the productive sectors of an economy is a critical factor for a growth prospect and the expansion of productive activity brought about by developmental actions. The overall approach drives to conclusions and strategy proposals aiming at economic growth and development.


ABSTRACT This case study explores issues of depression, body image, attachment and suicidality in the context of dance movement therapy with an adolescent boy. Specifically, it looks to investigate the nonverbal aspects of the emerging therapeutic relationship and the use of experiential techniques as a means of creating a secure base where the patient can freely explore and share his inner world with the therapist. The therapy process took place between the author, who was at the time a trainee in dance movement therapy, and an eighteen year old boy attending a day hospital after a suicide attempt. The process is presented through the description of the sessions, with a specific focus on the intersubjective movement experience shared by the therapist and patient, and its relation to the patient's emotional strugglings. Selected drawings by the patient are also presented, as drawing played a key role in the sessions.


Abstract : Hydroxylation of cis-cycloacctene with performic acid, and hydrolysis of solvolysis with HCOOH of cis-cycloacctene oxide, yielded more 1, 4-cycloacctanediol than the expected product, trans-1, 2-cycloacctanediol. The structure of 1, 4-cycloacctanediol was established by conversion to cycloacctane through the diacetate and cycloacctadiene, and by Oppenauer oxidation to 1, 4-cycloacctanedione, which by an intramolecular aldol condensation formed the known ketone, bicyclo (3.3.0) - 1 (5)-octen-2-one. The molecular rearrangement resulting in formation of the 1, 4-glycol was interpreted as a chemical transannular effect which permits participation in the solvolysis of the epoxide by a C-H bond which is sterically adjacent because of its location across the compact 8-membered ring. The 8-membered cyclic acyloin suberion and cis-1, 2- cycloacctanediol were prepared and characterized.(Contractor's abstract) (Prepared for publication in J.Am.Chem.Soc.)


Addressing mental health issues is a core concern in the treatment of people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their families. Mental health issues are widespread after TBI and arise whether the injury was sustained in civilian or conflict contexts. In the Guest Editorial, Simon Fleminger outlines key issues and conundrums that arise in the intertwining of mental health problems and TBI, as well as the importance of integrating the treatment of mental health conditions into neurorehabilitation.


The technique on on-line weighing in the course of NaK alloy preparation was investigated.The design program on on-line weighing loop of NaK alloy preparation was established by theoritical analysis,and the devices were set up.The rectification equation was obtained by standard poise for on-line weighing.The correction equation and its weighing method are right which are proved by outline weighing for NaK after transfer.The method is suitable well for on-line weighing in the course of NaK alloy preparation.


the sponsor-founder of the Roman Church. Thereafter, Saint Peter's continued to func tion partly as the public chapel of the reign ing pope, partly as the mausoleum of Saint Peter, and, most important, as a symbol of the legitimate succession and primacy of Roman bishops, from Peter to the present. In the ring of the great dome is inscribed Christ's commandment to Peter, with this statement legitimizing the founding of the Catholic Church in "stone" (petra): "Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam ..(Matthew 16:18). The cathedra Petri, as erected by Bernini behind the papal altar in the apse of Saint Peter's, represents the throne (cathedra) of Saint Peter as Christ's vicar. Buried nearby and directly under the baldacchino (also designed by Bernini, 1624-1633) that was erected under the dome in the crossing, Peter is symbolically present in the empty throne suspended in the apse. As designed by Ber nini, the throne of Saint Peter appears to hover in the air by divine will. This is a brilliant coup de théâtre; the four Church Fathers—Saints Ambrose, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, and Augustine—surround the airborne chair but do not actually support it with their arms. In fact, Benini's hovering seat, a sedes itself that stands for the Holy See (Sancta Sedes), literally "represents" a "real" throne, the cathedra Petri. But this venerated object (Fig. 2) remains invisible to the viewer, as it has since at least 1666. Since the "real" chair (Fig. 2), which is made of wood, has been wholly encased within a magnificently worked, gilded bronze pseudothrone, Bernini's cathedra Petri (Fig. 1) becomes in fact a "reliquary," an elaborately crafted vessel or container for a holy relic. It is further presumed that the ancient wooden cathedra Petri (Fig. 2) had once actually been sat upon by Saint Peter. Accordingly, that hidden piece of furniture must be dated by the devout to the first century of the Christian era, as Bernini must have believed. However, the truth of the matter is different. Not until its removal


Blockchain's decentralized and consensus mechanism has attracted lots of applications, such as IoT devices. Blockchain maintains a linked list of blocks and grows by mining new blocks. However, the Blockchain mining consumes huge computation resource and energy, which is unacceptable for resource-limited embedded devices. This paper for the first time presents a ReRAM-based processing-in-memory architecture for Blockchain mining, called Re-Mining. Re-Mining includes a message schedule module and a SHA computation module. The modules are composed of several basic ReRAM-based logic operations units, such as ROR, RSF and XOR. Re-Mining further designs intra-transaction and inter-transaction parallel mechanisms to accelerate the Blockchain mining. Simulation results show that the proposed Re-Mining architecture outperforms CPU-based and GPU-based implementations significantly.


Business Transformation Strategies: The Strategic Leader as Innovation Manager By Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2011, Pages: 657, Price: ?750 ISBN: 978-81-321-0501-5The book "Business Transformation Strategies: The Strategic Leader as Innovation Manager" is positioned as a motivational source to everyone who belong to business and commercial field. Author has used the tale 'The strategic Leader as Innovation Manager' very simply to elaborate various challenges and possible solutions. Author has tried to make us think about a situation where the executives of a company are considered as strategic leaders and are responsible to enhance productivity/efficiency of the organization yet are not sure of where to start and how to progress. Well, past experiences of executives may be an option that can act as initial set of information for such decisions. But these executives are getting some spread information and contradictory arguments. Author has brought the concept of strategy to strategic leader under one umbrella that provides the information about which way these executives should go what can bring them more relevant and appropriate decision being strategic leader. To a very large extent author has answered these questions in this book and draws attention to different roles of Chief Executives as strategic leader by providing insights for appropriate compatibility decisions.'Business transformation' is an overarching concept encircling a range of competitive strategies which organizations adopt in order to bring about significant improvements in business performance. This concept is carrying a long and wide history in both business management and innovation. The book "Business Transformation Strategies" is an effort to encourage readers to understand the role of strategic leader in business transformation. Author of the book have realized that burden of change falls on few people. More specifically, CEO as strategic leader plays a vital role in innovating, processing and managing the business and transformation strategies. Therefore, book also focuses on corporate leadership strategies. In the book different models of business transformation are reviewed, various definitions of critical thinking, strategic leader and innovation strategies are synthesized. The book seeks to address two vital issues complementarily:a. Is business transformation a single stage or multi stage process?b . The role of strategic leader in business transformation.The beauty of Book is its structure, the concept of 'Business Transformation Strategies' is presented into three parts focusing upon generalization to specialization. Author started from the general view of strategy in the first part. Strategies are very important part of any business. Formation and implication of strategies play vital role. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the concept of business strategies. This part is carrying two chapters that provide knowledge on the basic concepts and philosophy towards business and corporate transformation strategies. This idea really helps beginners and young business students to understand the concept of business transformation strategies.After having the basic understanding on 'Business and Corporate Transformation Strategies' author introduces readers to the concept of 'strategic leader'. Several researchers have invested efforts in the area of 'leadership' for instance: participative leadership (Indvik, 1986); leadership effectiveness in firms (Yukl, 2008); charismatic leader (Ladkin, 2006). In the present arena of globalization skills and abilities of the leader have become very imperative for the organizational success. The key element in any business transformation is the 'right leader'. Who ensure the right fitness of strategy and whose competence can drive the organization towards success. So, we appreciate the decision of author taking CEO as a strategic leader. Now coming to the specialization of strategic leadership author has identified two patterns. …


The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of pollution control on industrial production efficiency in 31 provinces and cities in the Yellow River and Non-Yellow River basins in China from 2013 to 2017, using the methods of the directional distance function (hereinafter referred to as DDF) and the technology gap ratio (hereinafter referred to as TGR) in parallel, while taking the industrial production sector (labor force, total capital formation, energy consumption and industrial water consumption) and the pollution control sector (wastewater treatment funds and waste gas treatment funds) as input variables. Undesirable outputs (total wastewater discharge, lead, SO2 and smoke and dust in wastewater) and an ideal output variable (industrial output value) are taken as output variables. It is found that the total efficiency of DDF in the Non-Yellow River Basin is 0.9793, which is slightly better than 0.9688 in the Yellow River Basin. Among the 17 provinces and cities with a total efficiency of 1, only Shandong and Sichuan are located in the Yellow River Basin. The TGR values of 31 provinces, cities and administrative regions are less than 1, and the average TGR value of the Yellow River Basin is 0.3825, which is lower than the average TGR value of the Non-Yellow River Basin of 0.5234. We can start by improving the allocation of manpower and capital, implementing the use of pollution prevention and control funds, improving the technical level of industrial production, improving pollutant emission, and increasing output value to improve overall efficiency performance. This study uses the parallel method, taking the industrial production department and the pollution control department as inputs, to objectively evaluate the changes in industrial production efficiency and technology gap in the Yellow River and Non-Yellow River basins, which is conducive to mastering the situation of pollution control and industrial production efficiency, and provides the reference for SDG-6- and SDG-9-related policy making.


I magine trying to comprehend J. S. Bach's achievements if only one of his compositions had survived, not among his greatest, known from a single imperfect source. Such is the case with Bach's associate Johann Scheibe (168


together might have been helpful. Thematic treatment also makes for much crossreferencing and occasional repetitiveness. One might carp at other presentational flaws. The frequent inclusion of transliterated words or phrases from the Russian original in translated quotations may seem off-putting. There are rather numerous errors or inconsistencies in transliteration of Russian words. The index is quite selective. More importantly, though, the book has considerable merits. Nethercott examines the ways, for example, in which historians'work was affected by their backgrounds, personal lives and conceptions of their professional identity. Crucially, she shows how the notion of public duty upheld by the Russian intelligentsia encouraged the use of historical writing as a tool of public enlightenment and even popularization. Viewing themselves as public figures, historians were bound to express opinions on topical issues and momentous questions of national destiny, such as Russia's relationship to the West. The 72 pages of endnotes attest to the author's extensive knowledge of Russian historiography and intellectual life and scholarship on them. In the broadest perspective, this monograph presents a fresh account of history-writing in late Tsarist Russia as a nationally distinctive dialogue of different genres in which the rigid boundary between history and imaginative literature was dissolved and in which the study of biography, agency, mentality and culture took precedence over the search for impersonal forces and socio-economic laws that would occupy Soviet historians.


THE STAINED GLASS CEILING IN THE BLACK BAPTIST CHURCH: THE CONTINUING PARADOX OF LIBERATION by Judy Diane Cummings The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of church laity and female clerics regarding the role and function of clergywomen and the effect those attitudes have upon ministry and vocational mobility of clergywomen including their access to the role of senior pastor in black Baptist churches that are members of the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc., the National Baptist Convention of America, and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, in Davidson County in Nashville, Tennessee. The study shows that many black Baptist churches belong to the largest of the black Baptist denominations, which are licensing and ordaining women to the gospel ministry. However, the attitude and behavior of the laity toward clergywomen continues to affect them negatively, and, due to lack of support, hinders clergywomen from pursuing leadership roles in the church, including that of senior pastor. The Black Church, which has been an avid advocate for the marginalized people of society, continues to be silent on the issue of inclusivity of clergywomen. Sexism is pervasive in society and is manifested in the church. As women enter ministry in large numbers, they find that the same sexism existing in society is in the church. Patriarchy was never the plan of God, and the gospel of good news was never intended to restrain women from pursuing full participation in the kingdom of God. DISSERTATION APPROVAL This is to certify that the dissertation entitled THE STAINED GLASS CEILING IN THE BLACK BAPTIST CHURCH: THE CONTINUING PARADOX OF LIBERATION presented by Judy Diane Cummings has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for the DOCTOR OF MINISTRY degree at Asbury Theological Seminary November 13, 2008 Mentor Date November 13, 2008 Internal Reader Date November 13, 2008 Representative, Doctor of Ministry Program Date November 13, 2008 Executive Director Date THE STAINED GLASS CEILING IN THE BLACK BAPTIST CHURCH: THE CONTINUING PARADOX OF LIBERATION A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Asbury Theological Seminary In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Ministry by Judy Diane Cummings December 2008 © 2008 Judy Diane Cummings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


One of the important characteristics of text clustering in datasets is that each cluster center in the dataset has a direction that is different from that of all other cluster centers. This directional information should be incorporated in clustering analysis. In this paper, a new robust fuzzy directional similarity clustering algorithm (RFDSC) is proposed by introducing membership constraints. The new objective function was constructed. Finally, the robustness and convergence of the proposed algorithm were analyzed from the viewpoint of competitive learning. Experimental tests of text clustering in datasets using RFDSC demonstrate its effectiveness.


The problem of formulating plans for the long term development of an economy has received much attention from both economic theorists and prac tical planners. In order to embody a mechanism of choice in such plans, most theoreticians start with a utility function defined over all feasible growth paths. Little or no motivation is given for the use of such a function. In contrast, those econo mists more closely linked to a planning process eschew the use of a utility function. For example, Kornai and Ujlaki state: "We do, however, not believe in the existence of such an objective func tion ["expressing the interests of society in a syn thetic manner"] and consider therefore the op timality of each 'optimum' to be only relative." [7, p. 334] The intention of this paper is to discuss issues which must be confronted when using utility functions in planning models. In such a discussion, one must remember that planners will have only limited information and limited techniques avail able. Thus, this paper does not pretend to be a contribution to the theoretical discussion of social


Abstract
An interesting topic for research and reconstruction in the history of mathematics in school textbooks concerns how geometrical theorems were named, and how the name became established within the educational system. In this paper, we examine the name Theorem of Thales, as it emerges at the end of the 19th century, within different cultural, mathematical and educational contexts and how it was attributed to different theorems in European geometry textbooks. In an attempt to explain this phenomenon, we draw upon the concept of didactical reconstruction, a concept which may prove to have wider application to the use of the history of mathematics in school education.


The embodiments of the utility model provide an array substrate and a display apparatus and relate to the technical field of display. According to the utility model, the number of pattern composition procedures can be decreased in the manufacture process of the array substrate, and the production cost of the array substrate can be effectively reduced. The array substrate comprises a thin film transistor TFT and a first transparent electrode. The array substrate further comprises a metal oxide film and an etching barrier layer film which are sequentially formed on the surface of the array substrate. A pattern of the metal oxide film and a pattern of the etching barrier layer film are formed through a single pattern composition procedure. The first transparent electrode is located within a metalized pattern area of the metal oxide film. The embodiments of the utility model also provide the display apparatus which comprises the aforementioned array substrate.


Objective To establish a method for the isolation and preparation of forsythoside B and acteoside reference substances from Lamiophlomis rotata.Methods Forsythoside B and acteoside in L.rotata were isolated and purified by macroporous resin,Sephadex column,and preparative HPLC.Results Analysis with HPLC showed the content of the prepared acteoside and forsythoside B reached to 98.93 and 99.91%,respectively.Conclusion This method is effective for the high purity of prepared acteoside and forsythoside B.It can be used as reference substances for the qualitative and quantitative analyses of Chinese herbal medicine.


Voltage dependent ion channels are integral membrane proteins that contain four subunits or domains, which are thought to surround a central ion conducting pore. These subunits or domains consist of six transmembrane segments (S 1 -S6) and a hairpin loop between S5 and S6, which is thought to form the pore. In voltage dependent ion channels, the stochastic opening and closing behavior is controlled by voltage sensors. The molecular mechanism of how ion channels open and close as well as the structural basis for coupling to the voltage sensors are not understood. In the present paper, a new view of the channel is presented. The emphasis is shifted from the channel as a whole towards the subunits, which are proposed to function more independently than previously assumed. Based upon the observation of equidistant subconductance states in a voltage dependent K channel, it is suggested that each subunit can make an equal and independent contribution to the conductance of the channel. It is furthermore suggested that channel opening and movement of the sensors are not strictly coupled: movement of the sensor is necessary for channel opening, but not sufficient. After the sensor of a subunit has moved, it is still in the "closed" conformation. Finally, a symmetry principle is introduced where only channel conformations in which all subunits are in the same "permeability' state, are energetically stable. Heteromeric channel conformations, that correspond to the subconductance state, are unstable and therefore short lived.


A vehicle-mounted internal combustion engine mounted on a motorcycle, the cylinder axis thereof is inclined at a large angle to the front of the vehicle. As a heat exchanger (40) of the oil cooling device is arranged close to the front or rear portion of the engine, the lubricating oil passage formed in the cylinder body (23) comprises an opening in the cylinder block, and from the heat exchanger (40) pipes (50 and 55) extending connected to the cylinder block (23) in the opening. Thus, to secure a desired degree of freedom in the layout of the heat exchanger, and the cost can be reduced by the vehicle internal combustion engine the optimum tube length.


A series of copolyesters 2 containing both linear mesogenic and non-linear non-mesogenic aromatic ester units was prepared and characterized for the ability of the latter to either modify or destabilize the liquid-crystalline (LC) properties of the former. The mesogenic units were formed from the reaction of 1,4-phenylene diacetate (3) with 4,4′-decamethylenedioxydibenzoic acid (5), whereas the non-mesogenic units were formed from reaction of the latter monomer with the diacetate of the non-linear biphenol, sulfonylbis(1,4′-phenylene) diacetate (4). The presence of the flexible spacer in each unit allows the copolyesters to form a nematic phase even at a content of non-mesogenic units as high as approximately 80 mole-%. Copolyester compositions with mesogenic unit contents approaching this limit for LC behavior appear to form melts which contain both nematic and isotropic phases below the isotropization transitions.


Thank you very much for reading at war in nicaragua the reagan doctrine and the politics of nostalgia. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their chosen readings like this at war in nicaragua the reagan doctrine and the politics of nostalgia, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some harmful bugs inside their desktop computer.


The paper provides an overview of the measurement issues affecting sensing systems based on QCM, operating in liquid exploiting impedance measurement. The paper analyses the effect of the presence of a liquid and its viscosity at the interface with the QCM sensors by analytical models and experimental test. The derived model takes into account the parasitic effects due to the measurement setup and provides a model valid for applications involving a wide range of viscous media.


This chapter is contextualised in globalisation, new capitalism, knowledge and change in the workplace. There is a great deal of current literature describing globalisation and the new capitalism. It is asserted that economic competitiveness in the workplace now depends on new skills, knowledge and technological change. This has implications for workers in terms of constant learning and adapting to change. In this chapter, we describe conceptions of learning and work and the experience of change through the voices of workers. The conceptions of learning and work are based on a study in two workplaces of older and younger workers. The perspectives of change, adaptations to it and descriptions of learning paths are also derived from the interviews. The implications of the findings for the provision by universities of opportunities for further learning are also considered.


After recalling basic phenomenological features of isospin asymmetric nuclear matter, we review predictions for the interaction part of the symmetry energy obtained from different microscopic approaches. The predictions are compared to updated constraints extracted from heavy-ion (HI) reaction observables of a recent GSI experiment. The discussion is extended to the neutron skin thickness in 208Pb and its relation to the density derivative of the symmetry energy. We underline the importance of giving proper consideration to the theoretical uncertainties of microscopic predictions in order to guide phenomenological analyses. In the end, we report briefly on preliminary neutron star calculations based on chiral nuclear forces and outline future plans.


Objective This research aims to determine the long-term impact of the Bloor Street Viaduct suicide barrier on rates of suicide in Toronto and whether media reporting had any impact on suicide rates. Design Natural experiment. Setting City of Toronto, Canada; records at the chief coroner's office of Ontario 1993–2003 (11 years before the barrier) and 2004–2014 (11 years after the barrier). Participants 5403 people who died by suicide in the city of Toronto. Main outcome measure Changes in yearly rates of suicide by jumping at Bloor Street Viaduct, other bridges including nearest comparison bridge and walking distance bridges, and buildings, and by other means. Results Suicide rates at the Bloor Street Viaduct declined from 9.0 deaths/year before the barrier to 0.1 deaths/year after the barrier (incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.005, 95% CI 0.0005 to 0.19, p=0.002). Suicide deaths from bridges in Toronto also declined significantly (IRR 0.53, 95% CI 0.40 to 0.71, p<0.0001). Media reports about suicide at the Bloor Street Viaduct were associated with an increase in suicide-by-jumping from bridges the following year. Conclusions The current study demonstrates that, over the long term, suicide-by-jumping declined in Toronto after the barrier with no associated increase in suicide by other means. That is, the barrier appears to have had its intended impact at preventing suicide despite a short-term rise in deaths at other bridges that was at least partially influenced by a media effect. Research examining barriers at other locations should interpret short-term results with caution.


The invention relates to a wireless sensing type rectifying system of rail gantry cranes, which is provided with a rectifying processor arranged in a gantry crane electric chamber and a programmable logic controller, and wireless sensor nodes which are respectively arranged at a rigid leg and a flexible leg of the gantry crane and a rail guardrail and for collecting signals. By using the self-positioning function of the wireless sensor nodes, the positions of the rigid leg and the flexible leg on the rail can be directly detected when the gantry crane is in walking, and the position data is transmitted to the rectifying processor, and the precision goal speeds of the rigid leg and the flexible leg can be obtained by appropriate PID algorithm, and a speed value is transmitted to the programmable logic controller and used as an order value of a driving device or an inverter to control the rotation speeds of the rigid leg and the flexible leg cargo motors, thus realizing the automatic rectification of the gantry crane when in walking.


RPGs as a special example of adaptation of popular culture texts Role Playing Games (or narrative games) constitute an important phenomenon in the modern culture. RPGs consist in the players adopting fictitious character roles in the reality created according to a pre-established scenario, which is related to particular texts of culture – mainly popular culture. The games are a peculiar type of adaptation, as the adapted layer is not the text itself, but the vision of the world that the text presents. Both the texts and the corresponding games are transmedial in character, which associates this form of play to the process of media convergence. The phenomenon of RPGs is also inscribed in the cultural current of "participation culture", in which people are not passive recipients of prepared messages, but active participants in their creation. In the case of RPGs, the participation involves enacting situations which reflect cultural archetypes, and creating cultural messages.


Beet curly top geminivirus damages numerous crops, including beans, beets, spinach, peppers, melons and tomatoes. Both the virus and its vector, the beet leafhopper, overwinter in the foothills surrounding the Central Valley. The known host range of the virus is now recognized to include many native and introduced perennial shrubs in the foothills. This is the first reported detection of the virus in plants in the families Ephedraceae, Rhamnaceae and Salicaceae.


This paper proposes a cross‐faculty simulation model for authentic learning that bridges the gap between short group‐based simulations within the classroom and longer individual placements in professional working contexts. Dissemination of the model is expected to widen the use of authentic learning approaches in higher education (HE). The model is based on a cross‐faculty project in which UK HE students acted as professional developers to produce prototype educational games for academic clients from other subject areas. Perceptions about the project were obtained from interviews with project participants. The stakeholders believed the cross‐faculty simulation to be a motivating learning experience, whilst identifying possible improvements. To evaluate whether the authenticity of the student–client relationship could be improved, the interview data were compared to four themes for authentic learning described by Rule in 2006. The data supported Rule's themes, whilst highlighting the added value gained from meta‐awareness of the simulation as a learning opportunity.


A Lovejoy novel. After one antiques dealer is murdered, another drowned and a third vanishes, Lovejoy thinks it wise to leave East Anglia quickly. On the trail of some rare antiques, he finds himself masquerading as a distant cousin of the Clan McGunn - and takes up residence as the clan's forger.


We aim for domestic robots to perform long-term indoor service. Under the object-level scene dynamics induced by daily human activities, a robot needs to robustly localize itself in the environment subject to scene uncertainties. Previous works have addressed visual-based localization in static environments, yet the object-level scene dynamics challenge existing methods for the long-term deployment of the robot. This paper proposes a SEmantic understANding Network (SeanNet) architecture that enables an effective learning process with coupled visual and semantic inputs. With a dataset that contains object dynamics, we propose a cascaded contrastive learning scheme to train the SeanNet for learning a vector scene embedding. Subsequently, we can measure the similarity between the current observed scene and the target scene, whereby enables robust localization under object-level dynamics. In our experiments, we benchmark SeanNet against state-of-the-art image-encoding networks (baselines) on scene similarity measures. The SeanNet architecture with the proposed training method can achieve an 85.02\% accuracy which is higher than baselines. We further integrate the SeanNet and the other networks as the localizers into a visual navigation application. We demonstrate that SeanNet achieves higher success rates compared to the baselines.


The work published in this paper has been elaborated within an activity performed under a program of, and funded by, the European Space Agency. The scenario addressed within this study activity assumes the discovery of an asteroid whose orbit propagation reveals a high probability of Earth impact within a very short warning time of approximately 1-3 years. In such a scenario, one (or multiple) kinetic asteroid deflection missions are identified as a viable mitigation method, but because of the short warning time a significant consequence is an extremely constrained mission preparation time with a "to Launch" requirement of 6 months or less. This results in a build or system adaptation timeframe of 2-3 months.


CASE: Alexandra is 5 ½ years old, the youngest of four girls, and lives with her parents. She is described by her teachers as a thoughtful, imaginative girl with a good sense of humor, and strong literacy and math skills. Parents describe her typical mood as happy and easy going. She has many friends and engages in a variety of play activities. At 18 months, Alexandra insisted on wearing boys' underwear before she would complete toilet training. At 3 years, she told her parents that she "should have been a boy," and insisted on wearing boys' clothes. Alexandra now refuses to wear dresses and wears a coat and tie to formal occasions, which has led to conflicts with her grandparents. During make-believe play, Alexandra always chooses to play the male roles. She keeps her hair short and her dress and mannerisms are so masculine that people who do not know her assume that she is a boy. Alexandra makes frequent statements about being or wishing she were a boy. When asked directly she says "I'm a girl, but I'm a boy inside." Her parents have recently become alarmed because Alexandra has begun saying "I hate myself," and once said that when her breasts grow she will "slice them off." She has recently asked her parents to call her "Alex." There is no apparent bullying or teasing from other children. Alex's parents are understanding and supportive of her quandary, though they have questions and concems about the long-term implications of these behaviors and choices. Chris is a 9-year-old boy, referred because of his preference for traditionally feminine clothing, toys, and activities. Chris's parents are divorced; he lives with his father and paternal grandparents, visiting his mother once a week. Chris met developmental milestones on time and always seemed "smart" and eager to learn. By 2 years of age, his family noticed that he was attracted to pretty and shiny things like dresses, sequins, and glitter, although he has always worn boys' clothing without complaint. During the next few years, he asked for Barbie dolls for his birthday and seemed fascinated by long blond hair. When coloring, he preferred pink and purple crayons and usually drew female characters, very decorated and with long hair. In comparison, his drawings of himself were small and plain. He occasionally said "I know I'm a boy, but I'm a girl in my head." His pediatrician advised the family to throw out the dolls and "girlish" toys, emphasize "male" activities, and insist that he draw boys as well as girls. Chris was so distraught by this that he was allowed to keep one Barbie doll, as long as he only played with it indoors and did not talk about the doll with friends. In kindergarten and first grade, Chris played mostly with girls and was not interested in sports or rough-and-tumble play. He was teased by other children and had few friends, mostly girls. He started to have sudden outbursts at home and at school that seemed beyond his control, sometimes kicking walls and punching himself in the head. At the beginning of third grade, Chris agreed to join the soccer team as his father wanted. His family no longer sees him playing with Barbies and he has agreed to a few play dates with new boys in his class. Chris is quieter than he used to be, with fewer outbursts. For his birthday, he privately asked his father's fiance for a blond long-haired wig, but when his father confronted him, he denied it. His father reports that "the phase" has finally passed.


Base (I), which had been presumed to be O-methylisopilocereine, was synthesized and two racemic diastereomers were isolated. However, the fact that these bases are not O-methylisopilocereine suggested that the latter should be represented by formula (XII), which had been assigned to O-methylpilocereine and O-methylpiloceredine.


The availability of quality service substantially influences consumer satisfac tion. Therefore, the provision of quality service has become an increasingly impor tant concern of hotel/motel managers. Due to the size, growth rate, and special concerns of the mature population, their assessment of hotel/motel services is necessary in order to determine whatservices hotels/motels should provide to attract and maintain theirbusiness. The purpose of this study was to assess the importance of services provided by hotels/motels as perceived by mature travelers. The objectives of this study were accomplished through descriptive analysis of quantita tive data gathered from a sample of mature consumers in the state of Texas using the SERVQUAL model. Results indicated customer services related to assurance and reliability were considered highly important. To attract and satisfy mature travelers, hotels/motels should focus their efforts to provide quality customer services of all types, particularly in the areas of assurance and reliability.


ABSTRACT This article situates reproductive applications as an emerging "do-it-yourself" health technology in need of feminist technical communication action. The authors focus on Glow, a fertility and period tracking application, and argue that though this application promises user's self-empowerment over their reproductive health, individual agency is often reduced. The authors consider how technical communication scholars can intervene in fertility and period tracking applications through a redesign of how consent is obtained when collecting user's personal health information.


As the crucial participant in the organic matter cycle of evolution, the characteristics of the fungi are always at the top of the researchers' attention. Many biologists have fully studied their growing habits, including the sensitivity of external environmental factors and the use of nutrients, etc. There are, at the same time, a few variations between different fungi. We study the classification about the most acceptable types of fungi, the features of various fungi and the simple method of their decomposition from a number of articles and publications. Then, on behalf of all the species, we select ten fungi, using data analysis and fitting, we have originally developed the model of fungi growth rate and decomposition rate. On the basis of this, we add the influence of external conditions on the growth rate of fungi, and finally we get a model of the rate of fungal decomposition and external variables.


Just 10 years ago 'informatics' was a relatively unknown concept to the healthcare and biomedical science communities. Over the past years, the field expanded significantly and informatics became not only well known, but also an integral part of daily business in these communities. Accordingly, JAMIA has been continuously expanding the informatics pyramid of published work, from the foundational work upon which important applications are built (such as new algorithms and innovative approaches), all the way to illustrative experiences of system implementations that have generalizable lessons and randomized trials of informatics interventions.

Practitioners suggest that JAMIA should publish a larger number of applied articles that describe the design, implementation, or evaluation of systems. Academics suggest that JAMIA should publish a larger quantity of foundational research reports. Defining the boundary can be challenging; what some consider applied work may be considered somewhat theoretical by others. Whether there is a dividing line between theory and practice of informatics and where this line would sit does not really matter (hence our section …


Eco-tourism development in nature reserves meet the requirements of the public tourists seeking tranquility and harmony of nature. However,due to lack of awareness about eco-tourism,during development process,there are still exist environmental damage,weakening of the ecological function and stakeholder interests,and so on. This paper started with the perspective of eco-tourism development stakeholders,puts forward the importance of responsible concept.It also put forward the corresponding management strategies for different stakeholders.


Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) (core)/poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) (shell) composite nanofibers were produced by coexial electrospinning and their characteristics were investigated. It was important to establish feed rate of each polymer solution and voltage for a successful coaxial electrospinning, and the composite nanofibers with good linearity and regularity were produced by an interactive control of these factors. The nano-sized fibers and core-shell structures were observed through electron microscopes and the presence of each polymer in the coaxially electrospun nanofibers was confirmed by spectroscopic analyses. Also, the contact angle between water and composite nanofiber web decreased compared with that of PET nanoweb due to the presence of PVA. It is suggested that coaxial electrospinning is an effective technique to improve hydrophilicity of hydrophobic nanofibers by blending a water-soluble polymer with maintaining nanostructures, and to incorporate water-dispersable nanoparticles and water-soluble bioactive components including proteins in the nanofibers.


The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of "earthenware dishes" is associated with high blood lead levels in children. Measurements of lead in blood were done in 169 school-children. Of this sample 100 children were selected: 50 of them with the lowest concentration of lead in blood and 50 with the highest. A questionnaire was applied to 39 mothers of the children with low blood lead levels ( menor que 20.2 µg/dl) and 48 mothers of the children with high blood lead levels ( mayor que 28.0 µg/dl). Results show that the use frequency and time of utilization of this type of dishes is statistically associated with high levels of lead in blood.


A direct search was carried out in bulk matter for free fractional electric charge elementary particles using the largest mass single sample ever studied| about 17.4 mg of silicone oil. The search used an improved and highly automated Millikan oil drop technique. No evidence for fractional charge particles was found. The concentration of particles with fractional charge more than 0.16 e (e being the magnitude of the electron charge) from the nearest integer charge is less than 4.71 x 10{sup -22} particles per nucleon with 95% confidence.


Greater Khingan Range is one of most important forest area in northeast China.It has critical significance for forestry management and production to understand long-term climate conditions in this region.Tree-ring chronology of Pinus sylvestris var.mongolica in A'li River of Greater Khingan Range was significantly correlated with the precipitation in current January and previous December by using response function analysis.Therefore,winter precipitations based on tree-ring records in A'li River since 1809 were reconstructed,which explained 47% of the variance in winter precipitation.Reconstructed winter precipitation series was coincided with wet-dry changes in Heilongjiang Province.Winter precipitation in A'li River for last 200 years exhibited four dry and wet periods.In addition,the winter precipitation also showed that climate in this area experienced alternating dry and wet periods,including dry periods in the early 19th century,wet periods in the mid-19th century and dry periods in the late 19th century to the early 20th century.While,climate was relatively dry in the early20thcentury,wet in the middle 20th century and dry at the end of 20th century.Reconstructed winter precipitations exhibited significant 85~38,5.0~4.5and 2.2years periodicities by using multi-taper methods.


In this paper, we propose a method for constructing new graphs from a given graph G so that the resulting graphs have the partition dimension at most one larger than the partition dimension of the graph G . In particular, we employ this method to construct a family of graphs with partition dimension 3.


Performance of microwave setups, such as ECR ion sources, may be affected by the selected type of the operating mode of microwave transmission line. The change of operating mode, if possible, is usually time-consuming process with substitution of some components and significant realignment. However, if we consider different modes of the same regular waveguide then mode switching can be made much easier and faster with the appropriate mode converters. In this work, we present the synthesized converter for switching between TE01 and TE11 modes of hollow smooth circular metal waveguide. Both modes are widely used, and in some cases it is hard to decide which one is preferable without experiments.


The aim of the research was to define an appropriate design of the nozzle which could be used to cavitate microbubbles and direct the cavitating water flow on the cleaning metal surface. Three different nozzles were evaluated. SolidWorks 2011 Flow Simulation software was used for calculations. Volume of vacuum bubbles in the flowing part of the nozzle was established. The water pressure at the inlet was varied from 4 to 10 MPa. Calculations show that in all nozzle structures amount of bubbles change slightly while pressure is varied from 4 to 10 MPa, so the optimal pressure of the water flow can be considered as 4 MPa.


Discussions in search of new methodologies that make the teaching of mathematics more attractive and meaningful has been incessant, were conducted research in the area of mathematics education that taught mathematics (content) in the classroom as well as the form (methodology) as being taught did not correspond to the needs of the student for the formation of citizenship as social beings. Thus, the purpose of this article is to point out methodological references and to establish some steps for the work with the modeling in the mathematical contents in the classroom. The Mathematical Modelling is a significant tool in the process, since it deals with an alternative methodology for Mathematics teaching. Teachers can use this methodology in both elementary and high school, aims to interpret and understand the most diverse phenomena of our daily life, the modeling provides the facilitation of learning by the applications of mathematical concepts making mathematical content more meaningful, from abstract to concrete. In this context, we sought to analyze the ways that modeling can provide to do mathematics in school and within the classroom, seeking to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the process of teaching and learning. In this sense, this work presents several aspects favored by Mathematical Modeling as a methodological alternative for the teaching of Mathematics, mainly in Basic Education. It points out the methodological orientations and establishes some steps for the work with the modeling in the mathematical contents in the classroom.


ABSTRACT We analyse the velocity dispersion for eight of the Milky Way dwarf spheroidalsatellites in the context of finite temperature scalar field dark mater. In this model thefinite temperature allows the scalar field to be in configurations that possess excitedstates, a feature that has proved to be necessary in order to explain the asymptoticrotational velocities found in low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies. In this work weshow that excited states are not only important in large galaxies but also have visibleeffects in dwarf spheroidals. Additionally, we stress that contrary to previous workswhere the scalar field dark matter haloes are consider to be purely Bose-Einsteincondensates, the inclusion of excited states in these halo configurations provides aconsistent framework capable of describing LSBs and dwarf galaxies of different sizeswithout arriving to contradictions within the scalar field dark matter model. Usingthis new framework we find that the addition of excited states accounts very well forthe raise in the velocity dispersion in Milky Way dwarf spheroidal galaxies improvingthe fit compared to the one obtained assuming all the DM to be in the form of a BoseEinstein Condensate.Key words: cosmology: dark matter – galaxies: haloes –galaxies: dwarf galaxies


This study deals with statistics describing Austrian schools and education in 1828–1915. The potential of this source has so far been used by researchers only most sporadically. The text presents the development of key statistical series, their contents, potential uses, and draws attention to some difficulties which researchers working with school statistics are likely to encounter.


An evaluation of the nucleon magnetic moments by application of the mass operator formalism of Schwinger is presented. The mass operator describes the mass or self-energy of the particle in interaction with an external electromagnetic field. Taking a constant (in time and space) external field acting on the particle, the expectation value of this operator, computed to the desired order of approximations contains a term linear in the magnetic field, and the magnetic moment is the coefficient of this term. (J.R.D.)


A process for producing an electrode of a semiconductor device, comprising the steps of: - forming an insulating layer (12) on a semiconductor substrate (11); - forming a tungsten silicide layer (13) on the insulating layer (12); - implanting impurity ions into the tungsten silicide layer (13) to form an impurity region in a lower portion of the tungsten silicide layer (13); and - performing a heat treatment of the substrate (11) on which the tungsten silicide was formed - structuring of the tungsten silicide layer (13) and the insulation layer (12) to form a gate electrode.


A method has been proposed for calculating fatigue damage under cyclic loading, in which the loading in half-cycles is not simple, i.e., the stress components in a half-cycle do not change proportionally to one parameter. In addition, the proposed method takes into account the situation when the strain rate in a half-cycle affects the degree of damage to the material (for example, in the case of material deformation under conditions of creep or exposure to a corrosive environment) and this rate can change in different loading half-cycles.


Thyrotoxicosis may exacerbate angina pectoris in patients with coronary artery disease but angina also occurs in thyrotoxic patients with normal coronary arteries. Four female severely thyrotoxic patients presented with apparent angina pectoris as a manifestation of their thyrotoxicosis. Two of them had transiently abnormal ECGs during pain. Treatment for thyrotoxicosis immediately stopped the chest pain, which did not recur. All patients had negative exercise ECGs, and one had a normal coronary angiogram.


Recently, using sensors for campus positioning has been prevalent. Cameras with distance and angle measurement are ubiquitous especially in campus or special districts, where all kinds of sensors connect to the control center by different transmission technologies. This paper proposes a particle filter based scheme for tracking unknown cars in campus. The algorithm approximates the location of an unknown car in the campus which dynamic model is assumed. Sensors located at load sides and corners send detect a vehicle and receive its location messages. The control center hence can collect all the information and performs the proposed algorithm to estimate and track the locations of the unknown vehicle. We conduct simulations and experiments to show the performance of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results show that our scheme can quickly converge in the first four steps and the relative root-mean-square errors (RMSE) are less than 0.1% with 50000 experiments using 1000 particles.


This paper focuses on the foundational teaching and learning space within schools: the 'classrooms' of traditional design and the more varied spaces of open plan design. Since different physical settings facilitate some pedagogical practices while hindering others, it is interesting to investigate a single school where the layout of the learning space has been changed over time, questioning when and why changes were made, together with the eventual consequences for pedagogical practices in the school currently.


Introduction Maximizing responses of malignant gliomas is hampered by resistance to temozolomide (TMZ). Increasing efficacy but not toxicity is a key issue when testing drug combinations. The antimyeloma agent bortezomib (BZ) has shown promising results in vitro and is currently being tested in glioblastoma (GBM) patients. In this study we investigate whether reduction of TMZ dosage is feasible without compromising the antitumor effect of TMZ-BZ combination. Material and methods U87 GBM cells were treated with increasing doses of TMZ (1, 10, 100, 1000 µM), BZ (0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1) and the combination during a 48-hour period, and apoptotic or/and necrotic cell death was evaluated by flow cytometry. Results Bortezomib alone at a dose as low as 0.001 µM markedly induced cell death, particularly late apoptosis, to a level which was comparable with high TMZ dosage. For combination treatments, the dose of 0.1 µM BZ, which was more potent than the maximal dose of TMZ (1000 µM), was chosen to be added to increasing TMZ concentrations. The combination of 0.1 BZ µM BZ with low doses of TMZ (1, 10 µM) further increased the cell death rate in an additive manner, at levels higher than those induced by high doses of TMZ monotherapy (100, 1000 µM). Conclusions Efficacy of TMZ-BZ combination is feasible with low doses of TMZ in vitro.


Powdered form of iron with particle sizes ranging between few microns to milli meter scales is commercially termed as "iron powder".1,2) With its core metallurgical property combined with physical and chemical characteristics like purity, size, surface area, shape, and morphology, it attracts large spectrum of applications such as friction materials, powder metallurgy, soft magnetics, coatings, additive manufacturing, metal injection molding, diamond cutting tools, chemicals, oxygen absorbers, food fortification, metal fuels and environmental remediation.3–5) Apart from the physico-chemical properties of iron powders (IP), functional properties also judge its scope of applicability for a particular application. One such application in which IP are being historically used and is of prime importance for today's world is water remediation. Removal of contaminants from water by use of zerovalent metals like iron, Iron Powders as a Potential Material for Arsenic Removal in Aqueous Systems


The main purpose of this work is to study the long-time behavior of a compressible gas–liquid model based on the drift-flux formulation. The model is composed of two mass conservation equations and one mixture momentum equation. The flow domain is closed at one end and involves a free gas–liquid interface at the other where both phases vanish. The model includes a slip between the gas and liquid phases, i.e. they move with different velocities. This is a main reason why the model is useful for many industrial applications. We introduce a reformulation of the model based on the gas velocity. This gives rise to new nonlinear terms in the mixture momentum equation which account for the difference in the gas and liquid velocity. New challenges in the mathematical analysis will then appear. In particular, under appropriate smallness conditions on initial data (initial energy) various time-independent estimates of gas and liquid masses, as well as fluid velocities, are obtained. Novel upper and lower bounds on masses are provided that contain precise information about the time-dependent decay rate. Hence, the long-time behavior can be directly extracted from these estimates.


In this paper, we present our design of a portable cluster supercomputer created specifically for processing PIV image data. To make the system portable for a laboratory environment, the cluster computer is required to run on minimal power and be light weight. The final cluster design was based on the Intel® Quad-Core Xeon®X3210 low-power processors. This hardware setup allows for a total system consisting of twelve processing nodes with a total of 48 CPU cores, one master node with 5 TB of storage, and a Gigabit Ethernet connection. The total configuration along with the case has an approximate gross weight of 390 lbs and works well on one standard 120-V, 20-Amp electric circuit. With this cluster computer, a speedup of about 28 relative to standard serial processing of a PIV data set could be achieved.Copyright © 2007 by Utah State University


Mobile networks allow a more flexible model of communication than traditional networks. Unlike cellular mobile networks, mobile ad-hoc networks do not have any fixed communication infrastructure. For an action connection, the end host as well as the intermediate nodes can be mobile and therefore routes are subject to frequent disconnections. The goal of mobile ad-hoc networking is to extend mobility into the chain of autonomous mobile domains, where a set of nodes form the network routing infrastructure in an ad-hoc manner. Absence of a fixed infrastructure in mobile ad-hoc network poses a number of different types of challenges to this area. Typical challenges include limited bandwidth, power constraint, security, routing, hidden terminal problems and corroboration of mobile devices. Routing in mobile ad-hoc networks is achieved through the mutual cooperation of mobile devices that form a chain of routes between two mobile nodes. Frequent topology changes, limited bandwidth and battery power of mobile nodes make routing a challenging issue in mobile ad-hoc networks. Internet protocols [109] are considered efficient to support routing in fixed mobile networks. However, current research shows their weak performance over mobile ad-hoc networks. Design of routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks have so far taken approaches similar to the routing protocols used in wired networks. Variations of link-states or source routing protocols or combinations of both have been reported. Most of these protocols are based on one of two techniques i. e. tables driven or on demand routing protocols [102]. Current literature [44] shows different weaknesses in the existing schemes. Taking the routing problem as the basis, this project investigated routing mechanisms for mobile adhoc networks. This thesis proposed the Mobile ad-hoc on Demand Data Delivery protocol (MAODDP) as a routing solution for mobile ad-hoc networks. The key features of MAODDP is the establishment of route and data delivery simultaneously one after the other. MAODDP deals some of the routing related issues along side routing. It is designed to minimize reaction to topological changes and uses a combination of sequence numbers and broadcast ID to ensure the freshness of routes. MAODDP is loop-free, self-starting, and can scales to different sizes of mobile ad-hoc networks. MAODDP offers quick adaptation to dynamic link conditions, low processing and memory overhead, low network utilization, and determines routes to the destinations within the mobile ad-hoc network. MAODDP functional model has been developed in Java and evaluated on the Scalable Wireless Network Simulator (SWANS). Seven different sets of experiments were conducted under various network environments. MAODDP found to be applicable in all types of network. The Protocol showed an impressive data delivery ratio with minimum consumption of available memory. MAODDP compared against AODV and DSR, where it performed well in comparison with each of these schemes.


The study investigated limited liability companies' involvement in, and influential factors to sports sponsorship in Rivers State, Nigeria. Cross-sectional survey design was used. A structured and validated questionnaire tilted Sports Sponsorship Involvement Questionnaire with reliability co-efficient of 0.82 was utilized to collect data from 247 marketing officers of the limited liability companies. Percentage and chi-square were used for data analysis. It was found that few companies are involved in sponsoring athletes' development (2.42%), sports equipment (9.04%), sports facilities (5.88%), sports competition organization (36.97%), and sports personnel development (0.84%). Company type, class and age independently makes significant difference in the involvement in sports sponsorship. It was recommended that Rivers State government should make policies and laws mandating these companies to sponsor sports in the state. The laws should be executed by appropriate sports agencies. Companies that sponsor sports should be given some concession in tax payment to government.


A MRI compatible small animal PET insert with high spatial resolution, high sensitivity and long axial field of view is being developed with depth encoding detectors by using dual-ended readout of pixelated LYSO arrays with SiPM arrays. The scanner consists of 4 detector ring and with 12 detector modules per ring. The ring diameter of the scanner is 111 mm and the axial field of view is 106 mm. The LYSO arrays have 23×23 elements and with a crystal size of 1.0×1.0×20 mm3. The outer dimension of each LYSO array is 24.6×24.6×20 mm3. The LYSO arrays are read out by two 8×8 Hamamatsu SiPM arrays placed at opposite ends. The size of each SiPM pixel is 3×3 mm2 and the gap between pixels is 0.2 mm. The active area of each SiPM array is 25.4×25.4 mm2. The 64 pixels of a SiPM array are read out with a resistance network circuit to reduce the number of signals from 64 to 4. The signal processing electronics consists of 12 singles processing units (SPU) with each processing 32 channel signals, a coincidence processing unit (CPU), a system clock and a synchronizing board and power supply boards. The performance of one detector module is measured by using NIM electronics. All except the edge crystals can be resolved from the flood histogram. A DOI resolution of 2.36 mm was obtained for events of E>350 keV if a crystal based DOI calibration is used. The energy resolution of the detector is 18.9%. The detectors was also measured by using the SPU and similar flood histogram was obtained. In the next step we will assemble the scanner, commence system debugging and perform imaging studies.


40 "Huizhou ma" native breed hens of 28 week age in 1 series cage were assigned into the trial group and the others of 588 hens in the same house into the control group. Trial hens were given clomifene citrate 8 days with continuous 4-days without drug in the middle of treatment period (12.5 mg/hen/day). After 4 weeks, the laying rates of the trial group and control group were 71.99% and 69.96%, respectively; total eggs and hatchable eggs per trial hen were 0.57 and 0.14 more than that of the control; average egg weight was not affected but the rate of malformed eggs and eggs with double yolks all increased in the trial group.


Businesses have a significant impact on the lives of their employees, consumers and local people, and it is important that their rights are protected. That is why there are laws in place to this effect. However, despite such laws, stakeholders' rights and freedoms are not always respected,
 and in some countries, these laws don't exist at all, which is why the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights addresses human rights abuses committed in global business operations. But there remains a gap between the theory and practice of business and human rights. Associate Professor
 Emi Sugawara, Osaka University of Economics and Law, Japan, is seeking to bridge this gap. To this end, her team of frontline researchers of international human rights is working to reassess clarity and effectiveness of international human rights law as 'norms of conduct' for companies through
 a theoretical consideration. Ultimately, the researchers want to fill knowledge gaps related to business and human rights and influence Japanese society, effecting positive change.


This paper presents the experimental heat transfer and pressure drops measurements relative to single phase air flow through two different Aluminum foams, electrically heated. Because of their interesting heat transfer and mechanical properties, metal foams have been proposed for several different applications both thermal and structural. The tested Aluminum foams present 5 and 40 pores per inch (PPI) respectively and they have been inserted in a new test equipment located at the Department of Fisica Tecnica of the University of Padova. The experimental heat transfer coefficients and pressure drops have been collected by varying the air mass flow rate and the electrical power which has been set at 25.0, 32.5 and 40.0 kW m2. This paper aims to point out the effective thermal fluid dynamic behaviour of these new enhanced surfaces which present high heat transfer area per unit of volume at the expense of high pressure drop. Moreover, the results of several semi-empirical correlations for pressure gradient calculation have been compared with the collected experimental data points.


The importance of modeling and visualization of radar's visibility was explained,the status of current research in the field was tracked and analyzed,and the shortcomings as applied in combat simulation were pointed out.The various factors were analyzed that would impact the radar's visibility on the battlefield,in accordance with the principles of the radar detection,the model of the algorithm of radar's visibility was proposed,the 2D representation of visibility was analyzed,the principles of drawing on computer were elaborated.On this basis,the tool was developed.The tool can not only show the radar's visibility in static conditions,but also compare the effect dynamically during playback process.Relative to other methodology,it is more practical,easy-to-use.Finally,an example was given.


On April 16, 1975 the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet confirmed by edict a new statute on the "Foreign Trade Arbitration Commission (FTAC) attached to the U.S.S.R. Chamber of Commerce and Industry."' This statute replaces the 1932 "Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the U.S.S.R. Chamber of Commerce." 2 The purpose of this article will be to discuss the important changes made and also what effect the changes will have in muting the criticisms leveled by numerous Western authorities with regard to the question of the impartiality and independence of the FTAC.


The main objective of this study was to clarify the strength degradation and the strain behavior of engineering ceramics at high temperature during long-term range. For this purpose, a high temperature creep testing machine for ceramics was newly developed together with a displacement measuring device. To begin with, alignment of load transmission train of this testing machine was carefully checked and sufficient performance of this testing machine was confirmed. Then, experiments were carried out by using sintered silicon nitride and sintered silicon carbide at several temperature levels up to 1723K and during long-term up to 1000 hours. The results indicated that the creep rupture curves of both ceramics showed a straight line relationship on log-log diagram of applied stress vs. rupture time at respective temperature levels, and furthermore that the scatter of the rupture lives may be negligible when compared with that of cyclic fatigue strength of these ceramics. Discussion on the creep rupture life of sintered silicon nitride from the viewpoint of the creep strain behavior revealed that the Monkman-Grant's law governed the rupture time of this type of ceramics analogous to the case of metallic materials.